nuclear-news

Tepco building wall between Fukushima nuclear plant and ocean

100 foot deep wall at Fukushima plant still being built, says Tepco — Trying to keep underground contamination from ocean — Years from completion? http://enenews.com/tepco-100-foot-deep-underground-wall-being-built-to-try-and-stop-water-from-seeping-out-of-plant-and-into-ocean-will-take-until-mid-2014 October 25th, 2012

 Title: Fish Off Fukushima, Japan, Show Elevated Levels of Cesium

Source: New York Times

Author:  HIROKO TABUCHI
 October 25, 2012

To stop water from seeping out of the plant, Tokyo Electric is building a 2,400-foot-long wall between the site’s reactors and the ocean. But [Yoshikazu Nagai, a spokesman for Tepco] said the steel-and-concrete wall, which will reach 100 feet underground, will take until mid-2014 to build.

October 27, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

Inedible for years to come – fish near Fukushima coast

Fukushima fish ‘may be inedible for a decade’ Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent guardian.co.uk 25 October 2012 Marine scientist finds levels of radioactivity in fish near stricken Fukushima nuclear plant are higher than expected

Fish from the waters around the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan could be too radioactive to eat for a decade to come, as samples show that radioactivity levels remain elevated and show little sign of coming down, a marine scientist has warned.

According to a paper published in the journal Science on Thursday, large and bottom-dwelling species carry most risk, which means cod, flounder, halibut, pollock, skate and sole from the waters in question could be off limits for years, .

Sample fish caught in waters near the stricken reactors suggest there is still a source of caesium either on the seafloor or still being discharged into the sea, perhaps from what is left of the cooling waters. As the levels of radioactive isotopes in the fish are not declining as fast as they should have, the outlook for fishing in the area is likely to be poor for the next 10 years, the paper’s author told the Guardian.

“These fish could have to be banned for a long time. The most surprising thing for me was that the levels [of radioactivity] in the fish were not going down. There should have been much lower numbers,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US, who wrote the paper titled Fishing For Answers Off Fukushima.
He said his findings – taken in part from Japanese research and sampling of fish in the area – showed how difficult it was to predict the outcome of a nuclear incident such as that at Fukushima. ….. http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/environment/2012/oct/25/fukushima-fish-inedible-decade-radioactivity

October 26, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | 5 Comments

Japan’s nuclear regulator warns that Fukushima’s situation is still precarious

Fukushima situation stable but still precarious: regulator (Reuters) Fredrik Dahl. 24 Oct,  – The situation at Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has been stabilized but is still precarious, more than a year and a half after disaster struck, a senior Japanese regulatory official said on Wednesday.. Continue reading →

October 25, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

Radiation hotspots in schools, playgrounds near Fukushima

AFP: Some school facilities in Fukushima city exceeding radiation limit by 1,000% — Many hot spots around playground equipment are especially disturbing – http://enenews.com/afp-school-facilities-fukushima-city-exceed-radiation-limit-1000-many-hot-spots-around-playground-equipment-especially-disturbing-greenpeaceGreenpeace 

Title: Japan’s radiation monitoring unreliable: Greenpeace 
Source: AFP
Author: Kyoko Hasegawa
Date: Oct 23, 2012

Government radiation monitoring in areas near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is unreliable,     Greenpeace charged on Tuesday, w, with heavily populated areas exposed to 13 times the legal limit.

The environmental group said authorities were wasting time cleaning up evacuated areas and should prioritise decontamination efforts in places where people live, work and play.

Greenpeace found that in some parks and school facilities in Fukushima city, home to 285,000 people, radiation levels were above three microsieverts per hour. Japan’s recommended radiation limit is 0.23 microsieverts per hour. […]

Rianne Teule, Greenpeace’s radiation expert

“We also found that official monitoring posts placed by the government systematically underestimate the radiation levels”
Some machines are shielded from radiation by surrounding metal and concrete structures
“Official monitoring stations are placed in areas the authorities have decontaminated. However, our monitoring shows that just a few steps away the radiation levels rise significantly”
“Decontamination efforts are seriously delayed and many hot spots that were repeatedly identified by Greenpeace are still there”
“It is especially disturbing to see that there are many hot spots around playground equipment, exposing children who are most vulnerable to radiation risks”

October 25, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

No solution to Fukushima’s melted nuclear fuel

Upload by: 座間宮 ガレイ
Filmed: Oct. 18, 2012
Published: Oct. 21, 2012
Translation: Fukushima Diary

Hiroaki Koide, Kyoto University Reactor Research Institute: There are a lot of problems and Tepco and Japanese government state they are going to pick the melted fuel up someday, somehow. I personally think it’s impossible.

October 24, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

“Sleeping dragon” Fukushima reactor No 4 nuclear fuel pool

Nuclear Perceptions Fight Reality OpEd News,   By William Boardman, 22 Oct 12,  FUKUSHIMA FREAKOUT OBSCURES REAL ACCIDENT THAT GOES ON AND ON These buildings are supposed to be seismically and structurally secure and, you know, if the ground sinks under them, that suddenly changes a lot of people’s perception,” Gunderson said, underscoring the assurances of the nuclear industry that reactors are constructed to survive earthquakes intact.   The Japanese “seismic calculations were wrong all along,” he added.

Unit 4 was first damaged by the earthquake/tsunami event, and then suffered several explosions during the aftermath.  Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) acknowledged that the building was damaged and went in during the spring of 2011 to structurally reinforce the elevated fuel pool, to keep the bottom of the pool from breaking and dumping fuel rods uncontrollably.

Today the Unit 4 building is buckled, and is two inches wider at the bottom than at the top.   There is at least one crack in its foundation.

Of the four Fukushima reactors and fuel pools, Unit 4 has the most nuclear fuel in the fuel pool, and no fuel in its reactor within the containment.  All the fuel in Unit 4 is outside the relative safety of the containment.  And part of that fuel is the entire hot nuclear core that used to be in the reactor.   That’s why the fuel pool steams on colder days.

“There is dozens of times more Cesium in the nuclear fuel pool at Unit 4 than was ever released in all the above ground [nuclear bomb] testing that ever occurred, so if that pool were to face structural damage from another earthquake, it would likely devastate Japan,” Gunderson said, “It’s a sleeping dragon.”

He added that until Tepco gets the fuel out of the pool, the world needs to keeps its fingers crossed that there’s not another earthquake, because Tepco is moving too slowly and methodically to make the site safe any time soon…… http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Nuclear-Perceptions-Fight-by-William-Boardman-121022-931.html

October 23, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

Authorities keeping quiet about Fukushima reactor 4’s dire situation

Fukushima Daiichi’s Reactor 3 and 4 are waterlogged, cracked and just one major earthquake jolt away from a catastrophe that one expert said could be “of biblical proportions.”

Fukushima’s Hot Water: Now Fallout in Our Kitchens?  On The Issue, by Kimberly Robertson, 21 Oct 12,  Information about radioactive fallout from Japan has been in very short supply since the unprecedented triple nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11, 2011.

“Nuclear meltdown” is a term for a catastrophic reaction in a nuclear reactor that has overheated. The uncontrolled heat damages the reactor itself, causing an uncontrolled release of life threatening radioactive material, also known as “radioactive fallout” into the environment.

At Fukushima this happened three times, an unprecedented catastrophe.With the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 2012, it was strange to realize that Japan unwittingly dropped an even deadlier bomb on itself. Fukushima contained over 100 times more cesium-137 alone than Hiroshima, and there are literally hundreds of dangerous radionuclides in the “mix.” Continue reading →

October 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment

Sinking ground under Fukushima nuclear reactor 4 brings catastrophic risk

Fukushima threatens Global Human Survival The Canadian,  21 OCTOBER 2012  : BY SUBRATA “…..is Fukushima still a threat? It seems that it is, and on a potentially devastating level. Mitsuhei Murata, who served his country as Ambassador to both Senegal and
Switzerland, explained in a recent interview that far from the situation at the Fukushima Daiitsu plant improving, it is actually worsening in an alarming way: the ground beneath the plant’s number 4 reactor is sinking.

Mr Murata implied that the whole structure is on the verge of collapse. He wrote to the Secretary General of the United Nations stating unequivocally that the fate, not only of Japan, but of the rest of the world depends on the No. 4 reactor.

The cooling pool still contains more than fifteen hundred spent fuelrods.  The collective power of these “spent” rods is 37 million curies.  By comparison, the release of nuclear material at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania (an INES level 5 event) amounted to approximately
2.5 million curies. In other words, there are nearly 15 Three Mile Islands sitting in the severely compromised Unit 4.

The ground beneath Unit 4 has sunk by about 31.5 inches already. Further sinking, or a minor earthquake could cause the entire structure to collapse, draining the pool and causing a meltdown of potentially catastrophic proportions.  Some scientists predict that
his would mean the ruin of Japan and a serious threat to the rest of the world. http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/nature/2012/10/19/4621.html

October 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012 | Leave a comment